[Footnote 2:  Mahawanso, ch. x. p. 67; ch, xxxiii, p. 203.]

It was not till the year B.C. 307, in the reign of Tissa, that the preacher Mahindo ventured to visit Ceylon, under the auspices of the king, whom he succeeded in inducing to abstain from Brahmanical rites, and to profess faith in the doctrines of Buddha.  From the prominent part thus taken by Tissa in establishing the national faith of Ceylon, the sacred writers honour his name with the prefix of Dewanan-pia, or “beloved of the saints.”

[Sidenote:  B.C. 307.]

The Mahawanso exhausts the vocabulary of ecstacy in describing the advent of Mahindo, a prince of Magadha, and a lineal descendant of Chandragutto.  It records the visions by which he was divinely directed to “depart on his mission for the conversion of Lanka;” it describes his aerial flight, and his descent on Ambatthalo, the loftiest peak of Mihintala, the mountain which, rising suddenly from the plain, overlooks the sacred city of Anarajapoora.  The story proceeds to explain, how the king, who was hunting the elk, was miraculously allured by the fleeing game to approach the spot where Mahindo was seated[1]; and how the latter forthwith propounded the Divine doctrine “to the ruler of the land; who, at the conclusion of his discourse, together with his forty thousand followers, obtained the salvation of the faith."[2]

[Footnote 1:  The story, as related in the Mahawanso, bears a resemblance to the legend of St. Hubert and the stag, in the forest of Ardennes, and to that of St. Eustace, who, when hunting, was led by a deer of singular beauty towards a rock, where it displayed to him the crucifix upon its forehead; whence an appeal was addressed which effected his conversion.  “The king Dewananpiyatissa departed for an elk hunt, taking with him a retinue; and in the course of the pursuit of the game on foot, he came to the Missa mountain.  A certain devo, assuming the form of an elk, stationed himself there, grazing; the sovereign descried him, and saying ‘it is not fair to shoot him standing,’ sounded his bowstring, on which the elk fled to the mountain.  The king gave chase to the flying animal, and, on reaching the spot where the priests were, the thero Mahindo came within sight of the monarch; but the metamorphosed deer vanished.”—­Mahawanso, c. xiv.]

[Footnote 2:  Mahawanso, ch. xiv. p. 80.]

Then follows the approach of Mahindo to the capital; the conversion of the queen and her attendants, and the reception of Buddhism by the nation, under the preaching of its great Apostle, who “thus became the luminary which shed the light of religion over the land.”  He and his sister Sanghamitta thenceforth devoted their lives to the organisation of Buddhist communities throughout Ceylon, and died in the odour of sanctity, in the reign of King Uttiya, B.C. 267.

[Sidenote:  B.C. 289.]